The Right Words
by enigmaticagentalice
Summary: Prompt: 'Jenny's Obituary' - from my dear friend Sophie Description: Set post-'Passion'. Angst angst angst…seriously, were you expecting anything else?


The obituaries all start in the same way, he notices.

_Passed away peacefully…_

_Passed peacefully on Wednesday…_

_Passed quietly in his sleep…_

How many of these are true? Giles wonders if it's simply something you have to say – comforting clichés to reassure yourself that death is something natural, normal, not to be feared.

How many of these people actually died in panic, in pain? How many knew what was coming and shrank from it, begged and pleaded and sobbed and raged against the inevitable?

All those lives, condensed to a handful of lines. Ink on a page and bones in the ground. The thought is horrific, as if death itself is making a mockery of them all. Reducing them, reducing _her_, body and soul and beating heart, to a grinning skeleton, one of millions hidden beneath the earth.

Her turn now. Her turn to be buried, his turn to write. It's an effort just to keep himself breathing, to live from moment to moment, but the funeral has to be arranged, the announcement has to made. It's in her will. She was young to even have one, but living in Sunnydale makes people conscientious about that sort of thing. She had put him down as next of kin.

He hadn't even known.

The local paper is open on his desk, phone number circled. The obituary section has been even more full than usual recently. So keep it concise. To the point.

_Jennifer Calendar_

_Passed away peacefully on Tuesday 24__th__ of February 1998_

_The funeral will be held at 3pm on 1__st__ March at Sunnydale Memorial Home _

_Family and friends only_

_No flowers by request_

Every word is a lie. Even her name. He writes it out again anyway, just to feel the pen curl around each letter.

_Jennifer Calendar_

_Jenny_

_Janna_

She had no family left. Her friends turned their backs on her. She found no peace.

_Jenny Calendar_

_Murdered by a monster on Tuesday 24__th__ of February 1998_

_Died alone_

_Afraid_

_In the dark_

_He scattered flowers enough to last a lifetime_

* * *

Her funeral is a small, simple affair, but well attended. Most of the faculty are there, with Snyder conspicuously absent. A lot of students turn up too - Jenny was popular. He's hardly aware of what's being said, sitting in a kind of blank calm. Maybe he should say something himself, but the words won't come. He's left his pen at home. Instead, faceless men pour out platitudes.

_Dedicated teacher_

_Loved by all_

Willow is openly sobbing on Oz's shoulder. Beside them, Xander and Cordelia are stoic faced but holding hands so tightly their fingers are almost white. The sight of them taking comfort in each other almost breaks him, until he feels a gentle touch on his hand and turns to see Buffy sitting next to him, staring resolutely forwards with tears sliding down her face. He isn't the only person to have lost someone they loved. So for the rest of the ceremony, he focuses on the small hand clasped in his, the girl beside him who relies on him. Who is already so broken, and can't afford to have him fall apart.

_Taken too soon_

_In a better place_

* * *

He puts off visiting her grave for days. It isn't until Buffy tentatively mentions where she's going that he agrees to go with her. He wonders if she too is afraid to be alone with…

It's better have company.

They hardly speak as they make the long walk through the cemetery, and he's grateful, because with every step the words grow louder, blurring in his head and drowning out the rest of the world.

_Ms Calendar_

_Passed away_

_No family and friends by request_

Her grave is far from the entrance. It's only one of four cemeteries in Sunnydale, and it's still full. Before it was just another part of the town, a routine stop on patrol. Now he can almost feel the people here, crowded beneath his feet. How could they leave her in this place, with only the dead for company?

_Janna_

_A dedicated monster_

_Scattered flowers in the dark_

Willow is taking her classes now. Her apartment will soon be sold, her belongings already moved out. Every part of her life is being swept away, her absence filled. She exists now only in scraps and corners of his world. Writing on a note. Hair in a hairbrush.

A slab of stone in the ground.

_Jenny_

_Died alone_

_Loved_

_Enough to last a lifetime_

They stand silent before her grave and the horror of it wells up dark inside him until it's all he could do to stop from screaming. He's seized by the sudden mad desire to throw himself to the ground and kiss the place where she lies, to tear it open and force her back to life by sheer will, or else to lie there with her and let the earth close over them. To damn the world and everything in it.

Instead he reaches out and traces the words on the headstone.

_Jennifer Calendar_

Perhaps, in the end, that was all that really needed to be said.


End file.
